What is happening in the poles?

Everyone is concerned now about the climate change impacts in the form of melting ice caps in poles. It is true that the ice on the poles started melting rapidly and quite unexpectedly. The photos below show the extent of ice in Arctic and Antarctic and disappearances of ice cover between the purple line and the present ice covered areas.

The graph below clearly shows how the Arctic sea extent decreased with time. The black line with grey coverage shows the average sea extent in past but that decreased to the green dotted line during 2006-2007 and it further decreased to the blue line in 2011-12.